Cap’n Bob & the Damsel » Sage Quotations

“Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.”
— Leonardo Da Vinci

Will Carbon Trading End Up like the Subprime Mortgage Crisis? » The Foundry

Do we really want to enter into our own version of carbon trading, which could result in a rendition of environmental subprime mortgages? Look at where subprime lending got us. Now imagine adopting a carbon trading system on a global level. Carbon trading undoubtedly fails the cost-benefit litmus test: Very high cost, very little (if any) benefit.

There’s also the possibility that carbon trading will be fraught with corruption, manipulation, noncompliance and mismanagement, especially if the government is running the show. In fact, the more I think of it, the more it does remind me of the subprime mortgage crisis.

Energy, economy create balancing act for Obama - CNN.com

Opponents of Obama's proposals say renewable energy would be expensive, take up large amounts of land, and might not even be able to generate sufficient energy given the aging infrastructure of the nation's electric grid.

"If the private sector will not invest in these technologies, it will not be efficient," said Alan Reynolds, senior fellow at the Cato Institute.

"Creating jobs by switching from one form of energy to another is a bad idea," he added. "You don't need subsidies for anything that is free. Getting a $7,000 rebate on a $100,000 plug-in electrical hybrid that gets its power from a coal plant doesn't make a lot of sense."